


Aftermath

by Flowers_For_Flamingos



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: A lot - Freeform, Abuse, Child Abuse, F/M, I’m sorry, JJ Needs a Hug, Kie’s parents are kind of assholes, They cry, This is Super long, i have a thing where I latch on to traumatized boys, it’s a problem, kie gives the best hugs you can’t deny it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:00:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24694150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowers_For_Flamingos/pseuds/Flowers_For_Flamingos
Summary: Emptiness isn’t something you feel regularly, because regularly you don’t feel empty.Even when you try to be void of any feeling, you sometimes still experience it. Deep down, your heart reacts, especially when you hide pain.Your heart hurts, and not in a heartburn I-ate-too-fast kind of way. It aches so deeply, it reaches your soul. You can feel the cracks forming, new ones developing each time you’re hurt a little more.
Relationships: JJ/Kiera
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> I apparently have a thing for broken characters and I like making them feel more pain. 
> 
> Will this make you cry? I don’t know, it didn’t make me cry... but then again I’m heartless. 
> 
> I sound like an insane person and I’m sorry for that but I love this show so much and JJ deserves the world! 
> 
> Okay, there’s some (itty bitty) kind of thing with JJ and Kie but it’s mostly platonic because these two are best buds first and foremost. 
> 
> Yes, there’s a lot of words... I got carried away.

Emptiness isn’t something you feel regularly, because regularly you don’t feel empty.

Even when you try to be void of any feeling, you sometimes still experience it. Deep down, your heart reacts, especially when you hide pain.

Your heart hurts, and not in a heartburn I-ate-too-fast kind of way. It aches so deeply, it reaches your soul. You can feel the cracks forming, new ones developing each time you’re hurt a little more.

Hiding pain and still feeling it is something JJ Maybank does constantly, so much so that it becomes habit. Push it down, the less you feel the better you’ll be. And each time, the cracks become a bit deeper, a bit wider.

True and total emptiness is when your heart can’t take the constant hurting anymore. Pain slammed it’s hammer one too many times on your beaten and battered soul, shattering it into a million pieces.

But before emptiness truly takes hold, your heart gives one last cry of outrage, of sadness. It shakes your very being, rattling your body. Tears so long overdue come boiling to the surface, anger and resentment and fear lash out in one final devastating wave. Then you just...shut down.

“ _Did you find them_?”

The question rings so loud in JJ’s ears, he nearly misses the answer. He wonders, fleetingly, how Pope mustered up the courage to even ask the question.

“No,” Shoupe’s voice is just loud enough to be heard over the pouring rain.

JJ knows, he _knows_ because he can see it, can feel it. The way you just know when someone is going to deliver bad news. You could read it in their stance, in the way they talked before delivering the news. He could sense it, because if there was one thing JJ was good at, it was reading people.

“So, they got away?” Kie’s voice wavers, nodding as if doing so will get Shoupe to agree with her. She glanced at JJ, and he meets her eyes, she’s begging, pleading that she’s right. That they’re okay. That this isn’t what it looks like it’s turning out to be. He can’t promise her that it is, so he says nothing.

Thunder crackles in the distance, “We...” Shoupe swallowed hard. “We lost them.”

JJ could feel it, his heart finally shattering. It happened a lot slower than he would have ever imagined. Seconds felt like hours and everything, _everything_ faded into the background. It wasn’t that he couldn’t hear what was happening, what was still going on around him, he just couldn’t focus on it. It all seemed irrelevant compared to what was happening inside him. His heart was breaking.

“I’m sorry.” Shoupe’s voice breaks, he sounds genuinely apologetic, but he has no right to be.

“You lost them?” Pope’s voice is still calm, JJ doesn’t understand how. Maybe it hadn’t sunk in yet, after all Pope sometimes struggled to believe in hurtful truths. “What do you mean you lost them? Like, they’re gone? What are you talkin’ about?” Pope’s voice grew deeper as he kept talking, the prospect of a break down becoming more and more of a possibility.

JJ’s breath sped up, on the verge of hyperventilating.

“They drove and open boat into a tropical depression, Pope.” Shoupe didn’t raise his voice or act as if their constant questions bothered him. He stood solemnly. His eyes brimming with his own unshed tears.

“So, they’re dead?”

Kie’s words sent a new flood of heartbreak through JJ. It was enough to send him over the edge, turning the remaining, fractured pieces of his heart to ashes. The pain burned behind his eyes, threatening to spill over and consume him. He wanted to punch a wall, to scream, to do something, anything but feel what he was feeling.

Shoupe looked into Kie’s eyes, “We don’t know.” He all but whispered.

“You drove them straight through the storm, man!” JJ could feel the tears coming down his face, but he didn’t bother wiping them away. There was a vast cavern where his heart used to be, sucking all the rationality JJ possessed. His desperate need to hit something became a desperate need to hit _someone_ , specifically Shoupe. “Are you kidding me? Come here!”

And all the sudden he wanted, no _needed_ to getrid of the tension, the sense of not being able to do anything! He lashed out, trying to punch Shoupe in the face. Someone grabbed him, but he continued to struggle.

“JJ stop!” Kie was sobbing and suddenly JJ wasn’t struggling to get to Shoupe, but instead to get to Kie. They dragged him back, further away from the group. He couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, blood pounded in his ears and he struggled a bit more. Another officer helped the first, wrapping his own arm around JJ’s bicep and dragging.

“Let go of me!” JJ shouted. He could see Pope and Shoupe arguing, see Pope finally start to break down.

“We’re still looking for him, alright?” Shoupe shouted desperately, he held a hand to Pope’s chest, looking sorrowfully into the young boy’s eyes. It was the first time that evening that Shoupe had raised his voice and Kie looked painfullyaware of it.

JJ could see it, her whole body was shaking as she tugged on Pope’s arm, begging for him to back off. She was crying harder and JJ struggled against the hold, thrashing and screaming, trying to get to his friends. He hated seeing Kie cry.

The angry, burning hatred was dying out though, the cavern was growing bigger, hollowing out his heart, soul and mind. He stopped struggling against the officers hold, instead focusing on the ground at his feet. Everything and nothing ran through his brain, events from the previous day,old memories of adventures past, what his dad might say or do about the boat.

He could never go back to his house.

And he couldn’t bring himself to walk back to the chateau. It was too awful to even entertain the idea.

JJ had no home. It was ripped off its foundation and blown through every obstacle imaginable. A third of it was at the bottom of the ocean, the rest stood on shaky supports hanging on to one another as it tried to keep what little was left from being totally destroyed.

His friends were the only home JJ ever knew, and without John B. his home wasn’t complete.

The realization sucked the last remaining emotions from him. JJ felt tired, tired of fighting, of crying, of getting knocked down. He was tired of feeling.

When the parents arrived, it was too late, there was no way to piece JJ Maybank back together, even if any of them knew how. He had long since stopped struggling, but an officer still stood on either side of him, one resting his hand on his shoulder.

They flew in like a hurricane, sweeping Kie and Pope up into a strong embrace, keeping their children together in the only way they knew how.

But JJ had no one, the officer had finally let him go and he stood looking on in a defeated silence. He almost didn’t register Hayward’s arm stretch out towards him. He didn’t feel himself move, he didn’t feel Pope’s mother grip him so tightly his ribs gave a weak protest, but he barely felt that pain either.

The hollowness has grown like a disease inside him, eating up every part of him, mind, body and soul. He felt like a husk of the boy he once was. He couldn’t feel anything, and he couldn’t register any words spoken to him. He sort of didn’t want to go back to feeling, because feeling meant pain, and JJ couldn’t live with more pain. So he embraced the empty feeling inside him, let it swallow him all that much more.

* * *

Kiera had always been able to get JJ out of his funks. It was something she prided herself on. She could always get something out of him when he would shut down. Most of the time, he would giveher a big, obvious eye roll and make some snotty remark about being depressed in peace. Other times he’d give her a watery smile before pulling her into a quick hug, mumbling a genuine “Thanks” in her ear.

But she didn’t know what to do for him now, especially when she was so desperate for support herself.

She had pulled him into a hug, one he barely responded to. She had noticed through her own tear filled eyes that his face lacked any expression, sad or otherwise. Tear tracks were not evident on his face and he didn’t look her in the eye.

“JJ, do you need a place to sleep tonight?” She had asked through hiccuped sobs she was desperately trying to contain. “C-cause Pope or I could...”

He didn’t react at first, staring through his own shoes. “JJ,” Kie tried to get his attention again. “Let’s go home.”

He shook his head ever so slightly at her, still refusing to meet her eyes.

“You’re not going to your house, do you understand?” Kie insisted, she grabbed his hand, pulling him with her as she walked. He didn’t fight her and she easily led him toward her parents.

Pope looked at her, his eyes conveyed the same question Kie was asking herself, _Was JJ okay?_

“Mom, Dad,” Kie choked on her words. “Can JJ stay over?”

She wasn’t really asking, he was staying with her or Pope no matter what anyone said. She gave JJ’s hand a squeeze before letting go, pressing her palms together. “Y-you gotta let him, Mom! He can’t go home, he-he—“ She broke down again, sobbing uncontrollably. She cried for JJ, for everything he had ever been through, how broken he was now because he had lost his best friend. Then she was crying for both JJ and John B.

Her father gave a watery sigh, looking down at the ground. A few tears dripped from his eyes and he pressed his palms to his face.

Her mother wrapped her up in a hug again and Kie berried her head into her mom’s hair. “He can’t go home!” Kie tried one more time, her mother nodded as if she understood.

But she didn’t.

“JJ, honey, you can stay in the guest room.” Kie’s mom turned her head to speak to JJ, but he was gone.

“JJ?” Kiera moved out of her mother’s hold, glancing around the tent, searching for JJ. “JJ?”

Thunder crackled, shaking the ground. “Pope!” Kie hollered over the boom. “Pope, JJ’s gone!”

It was a panicked fear, the one you get when you feel like everything was falling apart.

Because it was.

Kie ran out of the tent, her parents calling out for her to stop, but she couldn’t.

“JJ!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, but the words sounded like a whisper in the storm. “JJ come back!” She was sobbing again, hysterically so. She couldn’t run a straight line. “JJ!”

Her father caught up with her, picking her up and hauling her over his shoulder. “No!” She fought him, legs flailing and arms pounding his back. “We can’t leave him! He needs me! Let me down!” Her throat was raw from screaming, but she couldn’t stop. She had to find JJ.

“JJ will be okay,” Kie’s mom followed her father to the car, talking soothingly to Kie. “We’ll get the police to look for him, okay?”

“No!” Kie screamed again, fighting harder. Her father held her waist, keeping her from tumbling out of his grip. “You can’t let those bastards get him!”

“Kiera!” Her mother insisted.

“Pope!” Kie screeched, her voice was gravely and sounded nothing like her own. Her hair hung in front of her face, sticking to her skin and blocking her view of anything but her father’s back and the ground below her. “Pope! Help me find JJ!”

She didn’t hear a response from Pope, or anyone for that matter. She wondered if Pope was struggling to break free from his parents grip, too. She wondered if he had, if he was out looking of JJ now.

Kie fought the good fight, but eventually her father got her to the car, forcing her into the back seat. He ordered his wife to buckle Kie in, holding her down as she screamed and cried for her friend, she couldn’t just leave him. Her mom sat in the back, gripping Kie’s arm as if she would throw herself from the moving car.

They were driving away from the tent. Leaving JJ and John B. and Sarah behind. “We can’t leave them!” Kie insisted, pushing her mother away as she tried to wrap Kie back into her embrace. “We can’t just leave them!”

The drive home took longer then average. The storm seemed to grow stronger, lashing out in its own way at the loss of two innocent lives.

By the time they got home, Kie had realized her defeat. She sat still in the car, silent tears making tracks along her face. She allowed her mom to help her out of the car and up the stairs to her room. She got the shower running for her, and laid out her clothes.

 _JJ doesn’t have anyone to do this for him_. Kie thought sorrowfully as she watched. He should have came home with her, _she_ could have done this for him.

It would have helped both of them, Kie thinks, she’d have something to distract her, to take her mind off the sick feeling that seemed ever growing in the pit of her stomach.

And God knows JJ needed some tender loving care.

She hadn’t noticed, but her mother had left and it was just Kie and her thoughts.

She moved slowly, the day’s events and the night’s grief finally catching up to her. She felt tired, too tired for someone as young as she was.

She thought about just skipping the shower, of just laying in bed and crying some more. But there was blood on her shirt, who’s she didn’t know. It could have been JJ’s, most likely _was_ JJ’s from their run in with Rafe.

She suddenly had a desperate need to get out of the clothes.

The shower was hot and felt good on her skin. It was a momentary distraction, how nice it was to finally scrub the sweat and grime that had built up over the last couple of days.

But realty couldn’t be put off forever. As soon as she stepped out of the bathroom, freshly clothed in a tank top and sweatpants, hair damp and curly, she felt the same defeated tiredness. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, not for a while.

Lightning sparked across the sky, illuminating the world outside her window, as well as someone perched on her roof.

Kie jumped, searching her room for anything that could be used as a weapon. Had Rafe and Berry come to her _house?_ Did Ward send someone after them?

But then she heard it, the knock.

_Tap...tap...tap tap._

Long ago, when their little group were just a bunch of preteens, JJ had come up with a way to sneak over to one another’s houses. It was for when Kie or Pope we’re forced to stay home because it was a school night or grounded.

JJ would usually be the one to break the two of them out of their respective homes. It was his signal, tapping on the glass to alert them that he was here to bust them out. They would then sneak back down to where John B waited with the van that he wasn’t old enough to drive but did anyway.

JJ tapped on the window again and Kie sprang into action. She pushed open the window and pulled the sopping wet boy into her room.

“JJ!” Kie ran her hands through his hair and down his face, checking for any new injuries. “W-What are you doing? Why did you run off earlier?”

JJ didn’t answer her questions, he stood silently looking at the floor, watching the puddle that was forming beneath him grow ever bigger.

“JJ?” Kie asked.

She became instantly worried. JJ never was still. He was always playing with something, more often then not it was his zippo, turning it between his fingers in his pocket or flipping it open sporadically before immediately shutting it again. Now, his hands hung limply at his sides, not one finger twitching.

“I–“ He cleared his throat, still not looking at anything but the floor. “I-I tried P-Pope’s, h-he wasn’t I-in his room.” His voice was small and quiet, thick with unshed tears, nothing like what JJ sounded like.

“Well, okay.” Kie didn’t push him to answer her earlier questions like she would have normally done. Instead she swallowed the large lump in her throat and took his hand. “You’re freezing, take a shower, I’ll get you some of my dad’s clothes to change into.”

She led him to the shower, the room was still warm from its previous use and the water didn’t take long to heat up. Steam billowed behind the curtain, fogging up the mirrors.

Kie pulled a towel and washcloth from the cabinets, setting them on the closed lid of the toilet. “There’s some shampoo already in there. Wash your hair, take as long as you need too.” Kie insisted. “I’ll be back in a minute with your clothes.”

Kie shut the door behind her, leaving JJ standing in the same place she had led him. She was quiet as she moved down the stairs, careful not to alert her parents of her presence. She moved to the laundry room, hoping that there was a load ready to be put away.

This was what she had been wanting, something to focus on. She didn’t feel as helpless and pointless when she was helping someone. She wasn’t going to tell her parents that JJ had come back. They would ask him too many questions, they would demand he sleep in the guest room and Kie couldn’t allow them to take him away from her. Her mother would take over as caretaker and leave Kie to sit in her bed alone and with no distraction. Kie could help JJ herself. She could search for clothes, she could turn on the shower, she could patch JJ’s wounds.

But she also couldn’t stand to see JJ like he was.

She found clothes for him, moving back up the stairs silently. The shower was still running when she came back. Knocking on the door, she opened it slightly to call inside. “JJ, I have some clothes for you, I’m setting them on the ground by the door, okay?”

There was no reply from JJ, so Kie set them down and shut the door again.

When JJ did get out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, Kie had moved to her bed, scribbling on a piece of notebook paper. He wore one of her dad’s restaurant t-shirts and a pair of his sweatpants. His hair was wet and tussled and his bruises stood out strongly against his pale skin.

“Hey,” She spoke softly, patting the First Aid kit sitting on the bed next to her. “Why don’t we fix you up?”

He nodded silently and Kie’s heart dropped. JJ had never been quiet for so long, it honestly scared her.

How do you refill a void emptied by loss?

Kie wanted to know for both of them.

They moved back to the bathroom, Kie directing JJ to sit on the toilet seat. He sat with a _thump_ , still not making eye contact with Kie. He spread his legs for her as if it was second nature, which it kind of was.

Kie had patched all the boys up countless times for a number of situations. There was one time Pope sliced his arm open while they were all trying to fix the HMS Pogue, another time John B. had fallen off the top of a cement pile and had scraped up the whole right side of himself.

They called her Doctor Kie when she would take them inside and patch them up. They joked about it while she cleaned their wounds and pressed bandages to their skin. Kie secretly knew that they joked to distract themselves from the pain, which was why she played along instead of rolling her eyes and telling them to shut up.

JJ was constantly in her office because JJ was constantly in fights. He would joke the most out of the three of them and Kie wondered if he wasn’t just distracting himself from the pain on the outside. They had developed a routine, her and JJ, Kie would lead him to the bathroom and sit him down on the toilet seat. Because his face was the main point of pain, he would open his legs so she could reach him without him having to lean.

He’d rest his arms on his thighs and his hands gripped the backs of her knees. It was another way to distract himself from the pain, especially when she ordered him to close his mouth so she could clean the blood off his lip. When it hurt particularly bad he would squeeze Kie’s legs. Not hard, but enough to keep him from flinching away from her.

JJ didn’t make any jokes, nor did he move his arms to wrap around her legs. He sat still and unnaturally silent.

Kie dampened cotton-balls with hydrogen peroxide and turned on the sink faucet, waiting for the water to heat up.

“JJ, look at me.” Kie insisted, she gently took his chin and tilted it up, forcing him to look at her.

She saw emptiness. His eyes, normally a bright blue, now were dull. The spark that normally accompanied JJ on every adventure/crime was gone, stripped from him.

It made Kie want to break.

But she needed to be strong for JJ. So, instead, Kie swallowed down her sorrow and whispered, “This will hurt a bit, okay?”

He nodded ever so slightly, a move that was so not JJ. He never did anything slightly. It was always 100%. Never half-assed. It was a trait that often got him in trouble, because you can’t not give anything but your best when getting in a fight.

It was something Kie never knew she’d miss so much.

Kie cleaned his cuts, starting around his eye and working her way to his ribs. The dark purple fist sized bruises along the left side of JJ’s ribs made Kie sick. There were places that Luke had hit so hard they broke skin and Kie swallowed hard to keep from crying.

Most of the wounds on his chest and stomach had been cleared of blood from JJ’s night in the hot tub, but Kie cleaned them just the same. JJ never flinched or cursed at the pain the alcohol gave when making contact with open skin. It was almost like he couldn’t feel it.

“Okay, you can put your shirt back on, here.” She handed him a damp washcloth, warm from the water she had gotten from the faucet. “Put this on your face,” She instructed. “We’ll trade it for ice in fifteen minutes.”

JJ took it, pressing it to his face. He didn’t bombard her with questions like; What was it for? Why heat first, then ice? What would happen if you put both on at the same time?

It broke Kie’s heart.

“I’ll be back with some ice and some cream for your face.” She promised, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

She reluctantly made her way downstairs. She didn’t want to leave JJ, but the Neosporin was in the downstairs bathroom and she didn’t have anywhere for ice, pack or otherwise, in her room.

She made her way quickly through the house, shuffling through the bathroom closet until she found what she was looking for.

The kitchen was what was the problem, she prayed her parents had gone to bed.

2:09 the clock on the bathroom wall read. She moved as silently as possible, tucking the Neosporin in the pocket of her sweats. She ran to the fridge, opening up the freezer she quickly searched for an ice pack.

“Kiera?” Her mom asked, making Kie jump and slam herself against the freezer door, shutting it with a _whoosh_.

“Mom!” Kie barked, wielding the ice pack like a sword. “Don’t _do_ that!”

Her mother ignored her, looking at the pack in her hands. “What’s the ice pack for?”

“I have a bruise on my hip.” Kie spoke solemnly. She wasn’t lying, there was a bruise on her hip from when Barry had thrown her down during their run in that morning. But it didn’t hurt unless she pressed into it.

“Well, let me see, I could—“

I don’t need your help, Mom.” Kie insisted.

She suddenly didn’t want to speak to her mother anymore. Kie was angry, angry that her parents didn’t understand, or seem to care, about her friends or what happened to them. They wrote it off as a mistake and a horrible accident, not for the truth it actually was.

Her mother seemed shocked at Kie’s words. “Kiera I was only trying to help.”

She shook her head. “And I don’t need it.” Kie turned and ran up the stairs. Shutting and locking her door behind her. She didn’t need her mother coming up and apologizing or asking Kie to explain her actions.

JJ still sat with the washcloth pressed to his face and Kie took it delicately from his grip. It had turned cool, JJ’s face soaking up all the heat.

She pulled the tube of Neosporin out of her pocket and squeezed some into her hand. She spread it lightly over JJ’s face, making sure not to rub it in too hard.

“Let’s use this one now.” Kie presented the ice pack wrapped in a hand towel as a replacement for the washcloth. JJ took it, slowly pressing it to his swollen lip.

He still didn’t say anything and Kie suddenly had a desperate need to hear his voice. “JJ?” She squatted in front of him, trying to make eye contact as he stared through the floor. “Talk to me, what’s going on?”

He didn’t respond, he didn’t even acknowledge that she spoke to him.

“You gotta say something,” The tears that were threatening to spill over since the moment he arrived bubbled to the surface. A couple spilled over, making lines down her face. “You haven’t said anything an-and I can’t stand it!” Her voice broke as she spoke. “Please say something, I need you to say something!”

She broke down for the third time that evening, squatting on the floor in front of a toilet as one of her best friends looked aimlessly on.

“Kie?” JJ’s eyes refocused on Kie as if just noticing that she was there. He glanced at the ice pack in confusion, as if it too was a surprise. He bent down, resting his hands on her shoulders. His voice sounded panicked and gravely from lack of use. “Hey, w-what?” He pulled her up to a standing position and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling his face flush against her abdomen.

And just like that he was back, at least a little bit. He was nowhere near regular JJ, but he was reacting and moving and speaking and that was all Kie had asked for.

Kie let out a sob of relief, wrapping her own arms around JJ’s head and gripping the back of his shirt. She pressed her face into his hair and JJ hugged her a bit tighter.

“I-I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.” JJ whispered, Kie felt her shirt grow damp as he finally started to cry.

“I know,” Kie said, combing a hand through the back of his damp hair.

“I just...I couldn’t _handle it!_ ”

“I know, I know.” Kie took a shaky breath. “Jus-just tell us when you can’t handle it, okay? We can handle it much better together than we can alone.”

JJ nodded silently.

“Where did you go, JJ?” Kie whispered into his hair, worried that he would close off again if she asked.

“I don’t know.” JJ spoke just as quietly. “I just took off. I don’t remember anything.” He sniffled. “

They fell silent as Kie processed his answer, listening to the rain as it hammered the roof above.

“Kie?” JJ asked, breaking the silence.

“Yeah, JJ?”

“Do you ever feel...just, _so_ tired.”

Kie pulled back, looking at JJ with concern. “We can go to bed—“

“No, no, not that kind of tired, even though I definitely am.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, being careful to avoid the hurt parts. “Like, tired of everything? Tired of the bullshit and the pain and the world! I don’t know how to explain it!”

“Tired of the fact that no one seems to care about anyone or anything?” Kie asked. “That everyone is out to help themselves and screw someone else all at the same time? That no one listens to you, even when you’re crying and begging and praying that maybe, this time, they will?”

Kie knew exactly what he was talking about. Her parents treated her like a newborn child and not someone who knew right from wrong. The police never listened to them, acting as if they were making up nonsense. Everyone had one goal, to get what they wanted.

It ate Kie up inside. How did you become a person who looked blindly onward? She worried that she might end up like everyone else, oblivious to all the wrongs and only focusing on what she wanted.

“Yeah,” JJ sighed. “Like that.”

“All the time.”

“We’re way too young for realizations like this Kie.” JJ choked out a laugh, but it wasn’t humorless. It was bitter and regretful, filled with a hate that wasn’t directed at any one person or thing.

Kie sighed. “I know.”

“Kie?” JJ’s voice grew watery again. “What are we going to do now? What are we going to do without John B?”

Kie let out a sob, tugging JJ back into her embrace. JJ had voiced the question that she had been asking herself all night long. Jong B. was their rock, their center. He was the glue that held them all together. He had kept them from bickering too much, made them apologize to each other when things got out of hand. Without him, what were they?

“Right now,” She stepped away from JJ, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “We don’t think about it, right now we need sleep. So come to bed.”

Solve that problem tomorrow. It was an easy enough, although temporary, solution. Kie took JJ’s hand and led him out of the bathroom.

“I’ll try Pope’s again.” JJ said as he wiped his eyes. “Maybe he’ll be in his roo-“

“What!” Kie looked at him, astonished. “JJ, you’re not going back out there.” She gestured to the window just as lightning flashed across the sky.

“Kie, I can’t sleep the the guest bedroom, I need somewhere I feel comfortable.”

“You’re not sleeping in the guest bedroom, you’re sleeping with me.”

“But your parents-“

“Fuck my parents.” Kie spat. “They don’t get it, they never will. They can’t control who my friends are an-and...” Kie’s voice lost all its anger dropping into a wavering murmur. “I _can’t_ be alone.”

JJ nodded, relenting as he climbed under Kie’s sheets. Kie sighed in relief, crawling into the bed next to him.

JJ was a cuddler, it was well know throughout their little group, it was also well know that Kie never told him no. They were “cuddle-buddies” as John B. liked to say. JJ would find any way possible to get cuddles, wether it was late at night while looking at stars in the hammocks or out in the HMS Pogue in the middle of one of the hottest days of the summer. It had become natural. JJ would lay on Kie’s chest, wrapping his arms around her middle. She would lay her arms along his back, playing with his hair.

She had asked him once why he had liked cuddling so much.

“You’re heartbeat grounds me.” Was the only answer he ever gave.

They assumed the same position, but this time, Kie gripped JJ’s shirt as if he were going to disappear.

“God, I feel so empty.” JJ whispered, the hum of his voice reverberated through Kie’s body.

“You’re not empty.” Kie promised.

“I feel like my heart it gone, doesn’t that make me empty?”

“No.” Kie promised. “Because there’s a little me in there, putting the pieces back together, no matter how long that’ll take.”

JJ let out a broken sigh, and with it the tension in his entire body released.

And just like that Kie had healed a small part of it already.

It was quite for a while, JJ’s breath evened out and Kie thought he had fallen asleep until he mumbled. “Do you think they could have made it?”

Kie had never considered it, if they might have survived the storm, it seemed like it would never be possible, but when JJ asked her she felt it with absolute certainty.

“Yeah,” She breathed.

“Good, ‘cause I do too.”

They eventually fell asleep, tangled together they felt a little less broken, a little less empty.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear season 2 writers, please let JJ rest, thank you. 
> 
> I don't know, I might post more of these, definitely not as long as this one though.
> 
> Also, I’m all for shipping characters and finding the chemistry between actors really cute but I don’t condone to constantly shipping actors to the point where it gets uncomfortable for everyone (especially the actor) 
> 
> I wasn’t on Maddie’s TikTok live a couple days ago but the feedback I got from others wasn’t good. They’re both dating other people AND THAT’S OK! Y’all (and I’m not saying that everyone is doing it) need to calm down. Enjoy their friendship because if you keep acting like this they’re going to feel uncomfortable around each other and then you won’t even have that. 
> 
> So just a PSA for all those crazies out there! I’m not saying that people on here are crazy, but the people making Rudy and Maddie uncomfortable are. 
> 
> So, yeah, I’m done.


End file.
